New Game Round-up: Alpacas in Altiplano, Castles in Minute Realms, and Artificial Intelligence in the Future

Altiplano, a bag-building game along the lines of Orléans set in the South American highlands of the Andes — the Altiplano — is not a simple game, presenting players with new challenges time and again. There are various ways to reach the goal, so the game remains appealing to try out new options and strategies, but success or failure also depends on whether your opponents let you do as you like or thwart the strategy you are pursuing. The competition for the individual types of goods is considerable — as is the fun in snatching a coveted extension card from under another player's nose!

Aside from building up an effective production, you must deliver the right goods at the right time, develop the road in good time, and store your goods cleverly enough to fill the most valuable rows with them. Often, a good warehouseperson is more relevant in the end than the best producer.

At the start of the game, players have access only to certain resources and goods. This is due to the different role tiles that each player receives and that provide everybody with different starting materials. At the market, however, a player can acquire additional production sites that give new options. The numerous goods — such as fish, alpaca, cacao, silver, or corn — all have their own characteristics and places where they can be used. Whereas silver makes you rich, fish can be exchanged for other goods, and the alpaca gives you wool that you can then make into cloth.

In a handful of rounds, you have to build up your realm and make it grow by spending your riches. Will you yield splendor to your lands with refined buildings, or will you defend them with imposing bastions to repel the upcoming fall of the invaders?

A king's life is not easy. Every decision is crucial to the fate of the realm — and every single move makes the difference between victory and defeat!

Save or terrorize the city as a hero or villain! Mutate your character to gain new abilities. Gain fame and new traits by thrashing your opponents or rescuing/knocking out civilians! Light the city on fire, freeze and poison your enemies, and throw cars and trees to your heart's content!

Build your character in Masters of Mutanite by creating unique synergies of powers each game — go from zero to superhero!

The year is 2090, and the world has witnessed the biggest — the last? — event in human history. Knowledge is the fuel that powers the engine of the new revolution.

Technological Singularity changed everything. Human labor became obsolete; automation and machine learning are the new reality. Machines, run by a flawless artificial intelligence, control production and research, self replicating the answers to problems civilization did not know existed. While prophets whisper the end of time throughout the streets, corporations thrive, pushing boundaries and ignoring old rules. The rush to control the new A.I. era has begun and there’s no time for ethics. Is there time shut down the A.I. Box. Was there ever one?

Artificial Intelligence is an action selection game in which each player plays the role of a big investor pulling the strings from various corporations in order to make money and increase the power of both investor and corp.